The electronic industry has grown significantly in recent years. Applications of computer equipment are no longer limited to a small number of people. They have been widely used in people's daily life. In general, data processing equipment includes a computer host, input devices and display devices. The Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) display device was the main stream in the past. Such type of products has a large size, a great thickness, and flickering pictures. The curvature of the screen is difficult to be fabricated without any defect. Nowadays, with the advance of semiconductor technology, the LCD has been developed and introduced. The LCD has the advantage of being thin and small, saves a lot of space, provides steady pictures without flickering, and consumes little electric power. It has gradually replaced the conventional CRT display device.
Now also a pliable LCD screen appears on the market. It adopts the principles and technologies of physics and chemistry to generate pictures. It has the following characteristics:                1. Low electric power consumption: compared with the CRT display device or general LCD, the pliable LCD screen consumes much less electric power. One of the special features of the pliable LCD screen is that it consumes almost no electric power when the display picture remains still. This can greatly increase utilization and standby time for handheld data processing devices such as a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or notebook computer.        2. Reduced thickness: While the general LCD has a smaller thickness than the conventional CRT display device, it still takes a substantial space and has a substantial weight that could become a burden for users to carry around. The pliable LCD screen is significantly thinner and has a thickness comparable with a few sheets of paper. It is much easier for users to carry outdoors to do the required data processing tasks.        3. Folding and bendable: Besides the lower power consumption and reduced thickness mentioned above, the pliable LCD screen also may be folded or bent like a piece of paper, unlike other display devices on the market. Thus users can use it to read data and information anywhere anytime, and retract it by folding or rolling for storing when not in use.        
At present Sharp Co. and NEC Co. of Japan have jointly developed reflective LCD technologies. Toshiba Co. of Japan has devoted research and development efforts in low temperature high polymer silicon liquid crystal technologies, and Minolta Co. of Japan has developed reflective cholesterol liquid crystal material. Iridigm Co. of U.S.A. has developed a fabrication process on glass substrates that is based on a micro electromechanical architecture and coupled with thin film LCD screen manufacturing and Interferometric Modulator (iMod) techniques. It already has satisfactory results in terms of brightness and color. All the companies mentioned above also have prototypes for the pliable LCD screen. Those techniques have reached a well-developed stage, and the related products predicted will be available on the market in the near future.